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j\ THE AUTMOK IN IC A K I. Y LIFE / 

I EMANCIPATED HIS S L A^V E S . ^ 



I ' I 

P A FRIENDLY WORD ^ 

^ TO THE (^j 

I 

Rev. FRANCIS L. HAWKS, D.D., LL.D. 



AND OTHER 



NORTHERN CLEROYMEN, 



BY THE 



,1, Rev. JAMES PRESTON FUCIITT. ^j] 



BALTIMORE: 
PRINTED BY JOSEPH ROBINSON. 

186i. 



I 









Revolution. — " HideoUB changes have barbarized France." — 
Burke. 

" Concerning the materials of seditions, it is a thing well to 
be considered, for the surest way to prevent seditions (if the 
times do bear it) is to take away the matter of them ; for if 
there be fuel prepared, it is hard to tell whence the spark shall 
come that shall set it on fire." — Francis Bacon. 

" The instabihty, injustice, and confusion introduced into the 
public councils have, in truth, been the mortal diseases under 
which popular governments have everywhere perished." — 
Federalist, Madison, 



The absolute dominion of the master is no part of American 
slavery ; nor is the slave merely a " chattel ;" but the right of 
the master is a '^ pi^operty in the reasonable service of the slave." 

" I consider the definition of slavery, as given by writers on 
the civil law, and adopted by popular writers on both sides of 
the Atlantic, to be inapplicable to the state of society in this 
country. For it is a fact, which, I suppose, will not be denied, 
that no one of the United States upholds that form of slavery 
which makes the slave the absolute property of his master. 
And if I am asked to state precisely what I mean by American 
slavery, I answer, that a slave is a person ivho is related to 
society through another per s(m, called a master, to whom he owes 
due service or labor for life, and from whom he is entitled to 
receive sttpport and protection. 

^' This definition comprises, I believe, either expressly or by 
implication, all the essential characteristics of a slave, in that 
form of slavery which exists in our country : 

"1. It affirms that a slave is a person ; and when it is added, 
that he is related to society through another person, it is im- 
plied that both are persons of the same nature, and possessed 
of the same natural rights, and owing reciprocally, the one to 
the other, all those human regards which are consistent with 
their relative positions. 

" 2. It affirms that a slave is a person who holds not an im- 
mediate, but only a mediate relation to the community in which 
he lives. 

"3. It affirms that a slave is a person who owes service or 
labor to another, called his master ; in which is implied, that 
his labor is not his own, to dispose of as he pleases, but belongs 
to his master, to be disposed of as his master directs. 

" 4. It affirms that the slave ow^es his labor to his master, 
not for a term of time, but for life ; which implies, that the 
master has a right to, or property in the slave's labor for life. 

"5. It affirms that the slave owes cZwe labor to his master; 
by which I mean, that he owes it only in due measure, and in 
proportion to his abilities ; and, consequently, that the master 
has the right to exact it only in the same measure ; not to over- ' 
work his slave, but to require of him only such w^ork as is 
reasonable. 

"■ 6. When it is affirmed that the master has a right to the 
due labor of a slave for hfe, it is imphed that he has the right 
also, to transfer that right to others, under the same limitations, 
receiving an equivalent in return. 

"7. It is affirmed that the slave has a right to claim from his 
master support, — food, clothing, shelter, in sickness and in 
health ; and protection also from insult and violence." 



0FC23 1944 

SOURCE UNKNOWN 



SCRIPTURE VIEW OF SLAVERY. 



My coiintry ! I love thee, for thou gavest me birth, — thou art 
my mother, — by thy institutions I have been moulded, by thy 
laws protected, and with thy soil and scenery associations of 
social happiness, of domestic affection, and of friendship, have 
been formed. I give no importance to the peculiarities of sec- 
tions, and rear no walls of partition between different territorial 
boundaries. I love my country, the lohole country. I disregard 
the limits of rivers, lakes or mountains, by which the States are 
divided, and emltrace every American as a brother. Nothing, 
nothing,, shall ever dry up my sympathies for every part and 
for every member. And yet, alas I I see a dark cloud frowning 
over the whole land — 

''Thick lightnings flash, the muttering thunder rolls." 

What is to be done ? When the ship is upon the brink of 
the breakers, all hands try to put her about, ere she makes the 
last fiital plunge into the fearful gulf beyond. Trafalgar's flag 
said, " England expects every man to do his duty." America'^& 
Star Spangled Banner cries, '' Fairiois to the rescue!" Per- 
mit me here to say, as an impressed seaman cannot innocently 
withhold his service in a storm, if this were needed to save a 
ship from foundering, so the clergj^man, nolens volens, may be 
impelled by duty to country to exert liimself in the dark hour 
of revolution. And especially now, wlien the beguiling voice 
of dissolution is heard, '' Ye shall not surely die." Especially 
now, when the storm rages fearfully, and the Nortli and the 
South are grinding against each other like the upper and nether 
mill-stones. The passions must be bitted and curbed, else all 
is lost. But how to do this is the difficulty : for, alas, the same 
spirit which moved the Brahmin to break the microscope which 



showed him what he did not wish to see, and which made 
Gahleo's enemies refuse to look at the moon and planets 
through a telescope, seems to animate many at the present time. 
Yet, I do not despair of finding the tree which shall convert the 
bitter waters into sweet. That tree is patriotism. Let us arouse 
love of country, which is dormant, for patriotism just now is a 
sort of Rip Yan ^Yinkle. We are tossed about, destitute of 
chart or compass, on a sea of opinions upon which the wind is 
blowing from all quarters simultaneously. Do not let us con- 
tinue every morning to ask, " Is Philip dead ?" and receive in 
response thereto the stereotyped answer, " Ko, but he is sick." 
"VYe seem not to be aware of the danger. Ignorance is bliss. 
But our bliss is that of the benighted traveller without a guide, 
approaching a bottomless gulf, and that of the mariner without 
chart sailing toward the rock against which he is certain to be 
dashed and shipwrecked. We are waiting for the working of 
some miracle, by which to be extricated from our perilous posi- 
tion. Our conduct is as sensible as that of the traveller who 
stood on the bank waiting for the river to run dry. Lose thirty 
days more and the riddle shall be more difficult of solution than 
that of the Grecian Sphinx. Well for him who shall in any way 
be responsible for the ruin of our country if a Lethean draught 
were at hand. Well for him if an act of oblivion could be ob- 
tained. Northern fanaticism and Southern madness — Scylla 
and Charybdis. Again I appeal to patriotism ; that breakwater 
against which the waves of sedition shall dash, only to be 
driven back. With her I " hope on and hope ever." Yes, we 
are not hopeless, for be it remembered that "the purest ore is 
produced from the hottest furnace, and the brightest thunder- 
bolt is elicited from the darkest storm." We are not hopeless, 
for under Providence evil is converted into the means of pro- 
ducing its opposite good. Come let us reason together. I do 
not ask you to enter the field of controversy, as Marius re-entered 
Rome, breathing revenge, and remembering the marshes of 
Minturna3. No. I do not ask you to follow the example of 



the ancient Pyrrhonists, who perceiving that all the sects of 
philosophers agreed in one thing only — that of abusing each 
other — they therefore doubted of every thing. No. Come let 
us reason together. Examine v^^ith candor, and dissent with 
civility : " Let there be harmony in things essential ; liberality 
in things not essential ; charity in all." These are important, 
for, alas^ I perceive that there are two things in which all 
parties agree, the hatred with which they pursue the errors of 
others, and the love with which they cling to their own. In- 
deeii, their general bearing towards those who differ from them, 
reminds one of the cynical Diogenes, who went about in broad 
day with a lamp looking for an honest man. Do you say 
every Greek was not an Aristides, nor every Roman a Cato ? 
I reply, every supporter of the Union is not an Arnold, nor 
every advocate of State Rights a Burr. If any one is disposed 
to deny either of these affirmations, and can induce some other 
one to agree with him, I can only say in the language of Ames, 
" In defiance of demonstration, knaves will continue to prose- 
lyte fools." I speak plainly, because the times demand truth. 
The air is tainted with disloyalty, and my country is being 
swallowed in the whirlpool of passion. The insanity of the 
North and the frenzy of the South are *' King Chaos and Queen 
Niglit." These hold in their clenched hands the dagger — the 
handle and the blade — to murder us. The first with the fas- 
cination of the serpent charms to kiU, and the second with the 
song of the Siren entices to devour. " Disunion would not only 
embroil us with one another, but with foreign powers ; for these 
States, once divided, would connect themselves with foreign 
powers." And I am decidedly of the opinion that neither 
Northern nor Southern States can exist by or with the protection of 
an alien nation any more than one man may breathe through 
another's lungs. Again, " one of the highest functions of Union 
is, to avert evil. It is security from wrong." Indeed, we see 
in our land, to use the words of Burke, " Law is beneficence 
acting by rule." Uphold the Constitution inviolate, and main- 

1* 



6 

tain the Union intact^ and I doubt not the future historian shall 
say of Americans what Dr. Ruffin has so eloquently said of the 
ancient Greek and Romans : " Tlie warrior met the foe, and 
victory perched upon his standard ; the orator mounted the 
rostrum, and distant ages echoed his words ; the painter raised 
his brush, and the canvas breathed ; the sculptor touched the 
marble, and the animated statue stood before him ; the poet tuned 
his lyre, and deathless numbers rolled along the tide of song ; 
the historian chronicled events, and the wreath of immortality 
reposed upon his brow." To convey an idea of the importance 
of the question now before u& for our earnest consideration, I 
would say that the Union is the tire and the Constitution the 
Jiuh of the country : without the latter the former ceases to 
exist, and without the former the latter is useless. How im- 
portant is it then, to preserve both intact. Again, to vary the 
figure, I would say the Constitution is the heart, and the North 
and the South are the lungs. Do violence to neither. Yet 
again : the States of the North are the arteries conveying blood 
to the heart, and the States of the South are the veins carrying 
it therefrom. Each equally important — cherish them all. And 
yet there are those (at every point of the compass) who would 
tear the government to pieces, plunge the country in anarchy 
and wrap us in the flames of civil war. Civil war ! A blood- 
hound that never bolts its track when it has once lapped blood. 
Civil war 1 The fires of perdition bursting forth in the regions 
of the blessed. Civil war ! Infernal passions to rule over us, 
and our country made a province of hell — a Pandemonium on 
earth. Civil war ! The destruction of all our hopes, as imme- 
diate and resistless as liglitning — at home death, abroad our 
shame. Civil war ! Maryland, prepare to walk between burn- 
ing plowshares. 

The mere idea of brethren. North and Soutl], employing every 
power and faculty in the work of mutual destruction, sickens 
my heart. I feel that a civil war among the race that peoples 
this Continent snail be as violent as steam, as destructive as 



fire, as uncertain as the wind, and as uncontrollable as the wave. 
The alternate successes and defeats sfiaJl be as variable as color, 
as swift as light, and as empty as shade. The temple of Janus 
will be ever open, and the eventual quiet of the country will be 
like that which the Roman legions left in ancient Britain, the 
stiUness of death. 

" Spare my sight the pain 
Of seeing what a world of tears it cost you." 

At the close of the contest the home of liberty would be less in 
dimensions than a Lacedemonian letter. At the thought of civil 
war the public prosperity has coUapsed. I " separation is 
suicide ; it is the murder of a great nation and a great principle." 
Separate, and our country shall stand out in the histoiy of 
nations the GREAT FELO DE SE. The tear of the Peri at 
the gate of Paradise would scarce efiface the guilt of him who 
shall bring this crushing calamity upon us. And yet there are 
those among us who seize on secession, and others on coercion, 
as a child on a holiday. These would have the trumpet, which 
roused the fury of Achilles and of the hordes of Greece, to 
resound in our ears. He who would inaugurate civil war 
without the excuse of an overwhelming necessity therefor, is as 
wise as they who spent Hfe rolling the mighty stone up the 
arduous mountain, that at each remove it might again turn 
upon them with thundering bound. 

It were happy for my country and mankind if all parties' and 
sections would be guided by these words of Taylor, " we must 
observe the letter of the law, without doing violence to the 
reason of the law and the intentions of the law-giver." To 
hope for happiness and prosperity otherwise is as insane as to 
seek health by making poison our common food. 

The crisis being upon us, in what direction shall I turn my 
eyes for hope ? In that of Congress ? Alas 1 what do I see ? 
The fiddling of Nero when Rome is burning, and the laugh of 
the inebriated physician at the bedside of the dying patient. 



8 

We hear crimination and recrimination till the words of South 
are forced upon the memory, " It is the property of an old sin- 
ner to find delight in reviewing his own villanies in others." 
What Charon was in ancient Mythology the Demagogue is in 
modern politics. Then too, he is frank as the Delphic Oracle. 
And then, all courage and defiance I I doubt not when civil 
war shall have come the recruiting officer will write on his writ 
" non est in-ventus." His altiloquence being more than sublime 
it reaches the climax of stultiloquence. He talks much of the 
sovereigns, but thinks more of the eagles. His love for the dear 
constituency is so ardent that, having consumed their substance, 
he would now Jire their country. That in all these things he is 
the pink of honor we know, for the State distinguishes him by 
" honorable," and the people cry amen. Happy, thrice happy 
country ! in the awful hour of thy final travail to have at the 
bedside the demagogue to assist in the bringing forth of a hisus 
naturce. In Congress, how few have risen to the dignity of the 
occasion ; how very few have been equal to the crisis. " The 
Eepublic is threatened mth confusion and overthrow, on points 
rather of political punctilio than of practical concern, and on 
questions of constitutional philology rather than of administra- 
tive statesmanship." In pain and sorrow I turn my longing 
gaze from the Capital and look to the States. Alas I I see 
North and South, statutes blotting the pages of legislation. 
The demon Discord is at work. Oh I my misguided country- 
men, you forget " ye are brethren." Thank God ! these laws 
are unlike those of the Medes and Persians. I gaze, painfully, 
North and South, for a sign to ease my aching heart — the clouds 
are portentous^ I look over the entire country and witness a 
mountain oi piide, arrogance^ and infatuation; the words of 
" Lacon" rush involuntarily to my mind, and I recite them in 
all seriousness : " The Turk will not permit the sacred cities of 
Mecca or Medina to be polluted by the residence, or even 
footstep of a single Christian ; and as to the Grand Dairo of 
Japan, he is so holy that the sun is not permitted to have the 



honor of shining on his illustrious head. The King of Malacca 
styles himself Lord of the Winds; and the Mogul, to be equal 
with him, titles himself Conqueror of the World, and his 
grandees are denominated Rulers of the Thunder-Storm and 
Steersmen of the Wind ; even the pride of Xerxes, who fettered 
the sea, and wrote his commands to Mount Athos; or of 
Caligula, who boasted of an intrigue with the moon — are both 
surpassed by the petty sovereign of an insignificant tribe in 
North America, who every morning stalks out of his hovel, 
bids the sun good-morrow_, and points out to him with his 
finger, the course he is to take for the day; and to complete 
this climax of pride and ignorance — it is well known that the 
Khan of Tartary, who does not possess a single house imder 
the canopy of Heaven, has no sooner finished his repast, than 
he causes a herald to proclaim from his seat, that all the princes 
and potentates of the earth have his permission to go to dinner." 
A faithful delineation of the folly and arrogance and insolence 
of the day. Brethren, let us be men. I would here inquire 
the causes of our present trials and griefs ? One is, too much 
prosperity and too little gratitude to Almighty God ; another 
is, we have, in many instances, placed in power those whose 
MORAL CHARACTER and mental ability incapacitated them to be 
the Legislators, Executives, and Judges of a civilized people. 
Let the Augean stables be cleansed. A third source of our 
present distressed state is, the question of African slavery : — 
this is and has been for more than a generation a fountain of 
bitter strifes — a chronic cause of ill-feeling. Much lias been 
said and written on this subject during the period just named : 
if it were not for the gravity of the issues involved in the 
discussion, I would say of a large proportion of the slavery 
literature of the North and the South, the one is doggerel, the 
other is prose run mad. If we could forget it, the effect on our 
present bad temper would be similar to that which is produced 
by the laying of the axe at the root of the tree. On this subject 
I have a right to speak ; for I have not only emancipated my 



10 

oicn slaves, hut have contributed of my means, as well as solicited 
contributions from friends, to the purchase of the freedom of 
slaves belonging to strangers. 

" Cato, lend me for a while thy patience." You speak much 
of an " irrepressible conflict." What has that done ? Manacled 
the slave. I hear frequently of a " higher law ;" — do you mean 
Scripture ? No ; you cry out for an anti-slavery Bible. Whence 
came your " higher law ?" Are you a follower of Zoroaster ? 
Of whom the Persians framed the story, that^ wandering in 
desert places^ he was carried up into heaven, and saw God 
encompassed with flames ; which he could not behold with liis 
own eyes (the splendor of them was so great,) but with eyes 
which the angels lent him : and there he received from him a 
book of the law. What are the results of the teachings of that 
"higher law?" The present distracted state of the country 
answers this question. 

Sirs, we are brethren. People of the North — are you ready 
to " Beat your plowshares into swords ?" Southerners — are 
you really desirous to " Beat your pruning hooks into spears ?" 
If so, " tempora mutantur et nos mutamus in illis." We read 
in fabulous history of the Chimera, a monster vomiting flames, 
with the head of a lion, the body of a goat, and the tail of a 
dragon ; supposed to represent a volcanic mountain in Lycia, 
whose top was the resort of lions, the middle that of goats,, and 
the foot that of serpents. When I survey the whole field of 
Northern crimination and Southern recrimination, I am almost 
tempted to cry out " a chimera of the heat oppressed brain." 
The difference between the North and South is this : the first, 
would free the negro and starve him, the second, enslaves the 
negro and feeds him. To the poor recipient of such favors it is 
tweedle-dum and tweedle-dee. Further, Massachusetts is 
seditious, Carolina is revolutionary. Strangle the fanaticism of 
the former, and the latter is as impotent for evil as the rattle- 
snake without his sting. The truth is, when an excited indi- 
vidual charges this or that particular section of the Confederacy 



11 

with all the violence, and all the wrong, and all the disunion, I 
am inclined to say, Sir, from your notion I must dissent, as did 
Cuvier_, from the opinion of the French Savans, that a crab was 
a little red fish that walked backward. The alteration required, 
said Cuvier, is, that a crab is not a fish, secondly, it is not red, 
and thirdly, it does not walk backward. With this slight 
difference of opinion we agree. 

But, it is said, (Channing to Jon. PhiUips, 1839:) "We of 
the North sustain intimate relations to slavery, which make us 
partakers of its guilt, and which, of course, bind us to use 
every lawful means for its subversion." I am unable to see 
how I can be responsible for my neighbor's course of life, and 
am equally incompetent to perceive how a State is responsible 
for the municipal laws of another State. Indeed, when we 
consider the peculiar structure of our government, the assertion 
of one State that it is responsible for the domestic (or if you 
please intestine) institutions of another, and the claim of that 
State to interfere with the internal policy of that other, are 
simply preposterous. I would here say, the idea that the South 
is covered with guilt, and that other idea (twin-born) that the 
North is responsible for this guilt, are the original sources of our 
present deplorable condition. This affirmation cannot be 
denied. And while these chimeras haunt the brain, any at- 
tempts to heal our divisions and strifes will be as fruitless as 
the efforts of the fifty fabled daughters of Danaus, who spent 
their lives pouring water into vessels pierced like sieves. The 
guilt of the South, and the responsibility of the North for this 
guilt, are the seeds that have been sown broadcast, and we now 
have the spontaneous swelling of the seed-bud. The dragon's 
teeth have sprung up armed men. The seed of a like sort now 
being sown must be ploughed up, or we are undone. If these 
two ideas were once to permeate the Northern mind, and obtain 
the reins of power, the abolition sword, with its hilt at Washing- 
ion, and its point everyiohere, would pierce the very pores of the 
country. Hear Channing on the rendition of fugitive slaves : 



12 

" Make as many Constitutions as you will ; fence round your 
laws with what penalities you will ; the universal conscience 
makes them as weak as the threats of childhood." Universal 
conscience ! Here's the difficulty and the danger. Ideal con- 
science has usurped the throne of Scripture, just as the false 
gods of heathenism were set up of old on the altar of Jehovah. 
Guided by a morbid conscience rather than the Word of God I 
Behold abolitionism in its naked deformity — another name for 
atheism. The history of abolitionism — I lias malwum. 

The great defect in the Union is the public conscience and edjii' 
cation of the Northern masses upon the slavery question ; and 
the men who are dangerous to the Union, are the conscientious 
men of the North, who have imbibed the delusion that it is their 
duty to hate and to crush out slavery in the South. 

The public conscience and education of the North, — the tusk 
and the claw of secession ; break them and the monster disunion 
is harmless. Fail to do so, and grief shall be burnt into our 
souls. I firmly believe if the combustible anti-slavery matter 
be not furnished, the secession flame will die out for want offud. 
Let us perform our duty, O patriots, and an iron wall shall be 
reared to withstand the breakers of sedition on the one side, 
and the storm of revolution on the other. In order to remove, 
so far as it may be in my power, the causa causans of our 
present distracted state, I turn now to the religious aspect of 
this vexed question, and say, " To the law and to the testimony ; 
if they speak not according to this word, it is because there is 
no light in them." 

To the argument. What was the origin and meaning of the 
words slave and servant? Slave takes its name from the 
Sclavonians who many centuries ago overran the North- 
Eastern parts of Europe. But these Asiatic hordes being driven 
westward by the Goths, Huns, and other warlike races, vast 
numbers of them were finally destroyed, while a great many 
were reduced to bondage — and thus made the slaves of conti- 
nental Europe. Hence their national name signified one held 



13 

in bondage. Servant is derived from the Latin word servus, a 
slave — originally so-named, probably from being preserved and 
taken prisoner in war: one who was saved when he might 
have been killed. At the introduction of the word servant into 
the English language it meant slave ; and at the time of the 
translation of the Bible it had that signitication. Witness, for 
instance, the distinction in the Scriptures, on the part of their 
translators, in the words servant and hired servard : the former 
a slave, the latter a hireling. I will cite a single example of 
that distinction, from Exodus xii, 44, 45 — " But every man's 
servant that is bought for money, when thou hast circumcised 
him, then shall he eat thereof; a foreigner and an hired servant 
shall not eat thereof." The term servant in the Old Testament 
is generally translated from the Hebrew word ngebed, which 
means, literally, a slave ; that is, a person who is the property 
of another. The word servant in the New Testament is almost 
invariably translated from the Greek doulos, the primitive 
signification of which is slave, one owned by another; or as 
Aristotle calls 2i doulos "a living possession." All the classic 
authors of ancient Greece use the term doulos with this meaning; 
and when the New Testament (originally in Greek) w^as written 
by its inspired authors, doulos was universally used to mean 
slave. On this point all agree. 

I will here quote from a writer, who says, " Slavery is com- 
pulsory labor under the will of another person, who is to receive 
the wages of his labor. All labor is the result of sin ; it is the 
ENTAIL of the curse of God. Labor originated with the 
expulsion of Adam from Paradise. The ground was cursed for 
his first sin against his Heavenly Father, and he was compelled 
to get his living from it by the sweat of his brow, 

" So do Ave learn from the Bible, that when the human race 
began a new career in the posterity of Noah, that for the first 
sins of one of his sons, God renewed the curse of labor, and made 
it more onerous than it was originally, by connecting with it the 
degradation of sermtude ; the second curse was servile labor, 



14 

and it was instituted by God for the sin of irreverence of an 
earthly Father. 

" The first sin of man received a punishment which made the 
whole race feel how hateful sin must be to God ; the second 
showed that hatred more fully and clearly." 

The Hebrew word ngebed, slave, which the English version 
translates " servant," was first used by Noah, who in Gen. ix, 

25, curses the descendants of his son Ham, by affirming they 
should be Ngebed Ngabadim, the meanest of slaves, or, as the 
translation has it, " servant of servants." 

It were well perhaps to refer with some particularity to the 
occasion of the curse, just alluded to. 

Soon after the going forth from the ark we read (Gen. ix, 25, 

26, 27,) that "Ham, the father of Canaan, saw the nakedness 
of his father, and told his two brethren without." Thereupon 
Noah said, " Cursed be Canaan ; a servant of servants shall he 
be unto his brethren. And he said, blessed be the Lord God 
of Shem ; and Canaan shall be his servant. God shall enlarge 
Japheth, and he shall dwell in the tents of Shem ; and Canaan 
shall be his servant." Ham is believed to have been an impious 
man, and when Noah learned what his conduct had been 
toward him, he said, " cursed be Canaan." At this time Ham 
had no sons, so far as Scripture informs us. " The inference 
therefore, is, that he had married one of the doomed race of 
Cain^ and was styled ' Canaan,' by way of rebuke, and to let 
Mm know that he had degraded himself and posterity by this 
alliance." Canaan, one of Ham's sons, born subsequently to 
this event, as I believe, was the immediate ancestor of the 
people who lived in Palestine ; and as the Jews liad to come in 
frequent contact with his posterity, the name of Canaan is the 
most conspicuous of the names of Ham's descendants, and it 
includes all of them as we have reason to suppose, precisely as 
Ephraim often signifed the ten tribes. " Cursed be Canaan," 
then, means cursed he the race of Ham. " Noah, on the occasion 
in question, bestows on his son Shem a spiritual blessing — 



15 

* Blessed be the Lord, the God of Shem ;' and to this day it 
remains a fact, which cannot be denied, that wliatever knowledge 
of God and of religious truth is possessed by tlie human race 
has been promulgated by the descendants of Shem. Noah 
bestows on his son Japhcth a blessing, chiefly temporal, but 
partaking also of spiritual good. ' May God enlarge Japheth, 
and may he dwell in the tents of Shem ;' and to this day it 
remains a fact, that cannot be denied, that the descendants of 
Japheth (Europeans and their offspring) have been enlarged, so 
that they possess dominion in every part of the earth, while at 
the same time they share in that knowledge of religious truth 
which the descendants of Shem were the first to propagate^ 
Noah did not bestow any blessing on his son Ham, but uttered 
a bitter curse against his descendants, and to this day it remains 
a fact, which cannot be gainsaid, that in his own native home, 
and generally throughout the world, the unfortunate negro is- 
indeed the meanest of slaves. Much has been said respecting 
the inferiority of his intellectual powers, and that no man of his 
race has ever inscribed his name on the pantheon of human 
excellence, either mental or moral. But this is a subject I will 
not discuss." Campanella — " None are descended from Cham, 
but slaves, and tyrants, who are indeed slaves." Mede — 
*' There hath never yet been a son of Cham that hath shaken a 
sceptre over the head of Japheth. Shem hath subdued Japheth, 
and Japheth subdued Shem ; but Cham never subdued either. 
Which made Hannibal, a child of Canaan, cry out with amaze- 
ment of soul^ Agnosco fatum Carthaginis, ' I acknowledge the 
fate of Carthage.' " 

It has been truly said, among the prophecies of Scriptures, 
are three predictions referring to three distinct races, which seem 
intended for all time — the doom of Ham's descendants, the Afri- 
can race, pronounced upwards of four thousand years ago ; the 
character of the descendants of Ishmael, the Arabs, {" a wild 
man, his hand against every man, and every man's hand against 
him," Gen. xvi, 12,) pronounced nearly four thousand years 



16 

ago ; and the promise of continued and indestructible nationality 
made to the Israelites twenty-five hundred years ago. 

I continue the argument on the question is slaveholding 
per se a sinf without any regard to slavery in its practical 
workings. The covenant God made with Abraham, be it re- 
membered, embraced regulations respecting slaves, but not a 
word is said against the institution of slavery. That the patri- 
arch just named was a slaveholder we know, for it is written 
(Gen. xiv, 14,) that he went to the rescue of his brother with 
three hundred and eighteen trained servants, (slaves,) born in 
his house. Then, the chosen people of God were placed in 
Egyptian bondage for the period of four hundred years. That 
God had a special object in view in the enslavement of the 
Israelites there can be no question. Do you look, now, at 
Leviticus xxv_, 44, 45, 46 : " Both thy bondmen, and thy bond- 
maids, which thou shalt have, shall be of the heathen that are 
round about you ; of them shall ye buy bondmen and bond- 
maids. Moreover, of the children of the strangers that do so- 
journ among you_, of them shall ye buy, and of their families 
that are with you, which they begat in your land : and they 
shall be your possession. And ye shall take them as an inherit- 
ance for your children after you, to inherit them for a posses- 
sion : they shall be your bondmen for ever." The Divine sanc- 
tion here given at Sinai to slavery is patent. I would refer 
once more to the sacred Mount where God gave His law to Moses : 

There where His finger scorched the tablet stone j 
There where His shadow on His people shone ; 
His glory, shrouded in its garb of fire, 
Himself no eye might see and not expire. 

That law commands that the Sabbath is to bring rest to Ngah- 
decna ve Amathecha — "thy male slave and thy female slave." 
It also says " thou shall not covet thy neighbour's man-servant, 
nor his maid-servant," literally, m.ale slave and female slave. 
No believer in the inspiration of Scripture, I trust, will deny 



17 

that the ten commandments are the moral code for the Ilehrcw 
and the Christian. Divine Truth is one, and immutable, and 
forever. Hence our Saviour came not to destroy the law or 
the prophets, but to fulfdl. 

The first mention of a fugitive slave, is in Gen. xvi, 8, 9, 
where it is stated that Hagar ran away from her mistress, and 
the angel of the Lord found her by a fountain of water. And 
He said unto her, " Eeturu to thy mistress, and submit thyself 
under her hands." The angel of the Lord here mentioned is 
believed by many Christians to be Jesus Christ. Hagar calls 
him El the name of God, and Moses says that she called this 
angel Shem Gehovah, a name peculiar to God. Centuries after 
the return of Hagar^ the servants of David were told by Nabal, 
" there be many servants now-a-days that break away every one 
from his master." And he refused to feed them, alleging he did 
not know whence they came. When Shimei's two servants ran 
away from him, the King of Gatli and his son Achish informed 
him where they were. And Shimei " went to Gath to Achish 
to seek his servants ; and Shimei went and brought his servants 
from Gath." So much respecting the return of runaway slaves 
under the patriarchal and Mosaic dispensations. 

But it is written. Dent, xxiii, 15: "Thou shalt not deliver 
unto his master the servant (slave) which is escaped from his 
master unto thee." In the language of Whitby, " The Hebrew 
doctors understood this of a servant of another nation who was 
become a Jew. Whom his master, if he went to dwell out of 
Judea, might not carry along with him against his will ; and 
if he fled from him, when he had carried him, he might not be 
delivered to him, but suffered to dwell in the land of Israel. 
Which they understood also of a servant that fled from his 
master out of any of the countries of the Gentiles into the land 
of Israel; which was to be a safe refuge for him." On this 
point hear the Rabbi Raphall — " I answer you that according 
to all legists this text applies to a heathen slave who from any 
foreign country escapes from his master, even though that mas- 

2* 



18 

ter be an Hebrew, residing out of the land of Israel." — ''The 
slave who ran away from Dan to Beersheba had to be given 
up, even as the runaway from South Carohna has to be given 
up by Massachusetts ; whilst the runaway from Edom or from 
Syria found an asylum in the land of Israel, as the runaway 
slave from Cuba or Brazil would find in New York. Accord- 
ingly Shimei reclaimed and recovered his runaway slaves from 
Achish, King of Gath, at that time a vassal of Israel." (I Kings 
ii, 39, 40.) 

I come now to the New Testament dispensation. At the 
advent of Jesus Christ slavery existed all over the civilized 
world, sixty millions of slaves being in the Eoman Empire, and 
in Greece their number compared with the freemen was that of 
four to one. While the Saviour and His Apostles denounced 
all kinds of impieties, even that of idolatry, the State religion 
of imperial Kome, and which was more intimately and exten- 
sively interwoven with all the interests of State and people than 
slavery, this institution was never condemned by them. If 
slaveholding were sinful, nothing, nothing, would have pre- 
vented them from uttering a distinct and direct condemnation 
of the sin. What ! Jesus Christ refuse to denounce sin ! The 
idea is preposterous. What ! Jesus Christ come into the 
world to publish the ivJiole counsel of God — and then/aiZ in 
His mission ! As it respects the writers of Holy Writ, the 
scholar knows that the Evangelists use the words misthios, one 
hired ; misthotos, a hireling ; diakonos, an attendant ; and St. 
James uses the word ergaies, a laborer, — but when servants are 
enjoined to obey their masters, we find occasionally oiketes, a 
house servant, or, generally, doulos, the primitive signification 
of which, as we before said, is slave. I give a few examples : 
I Peter ii, 18, — " Servants, [oiketai] be subject to your mas- 
ters with all fear ; not only to the good and gentle, but also to 
the froward." — Whitby of this passage says, "■ This vras a les- 
son needful for the Jews, because the esseues against them, say 
Philo and Josephus, thought it ' against the law of nature to 



19 

be servants to any ;' and their Rabbins allowed not ' a Jew to 
be servant to a heathen.' " Ephcsians vi, 5, — "■ Servants, [dou- 
loi) be obedient to them that are your masters according to the 
flesh j" Colos. iii, 22, — " Servants, [douloi] obey in all things 
your masters according to the flesh ;" Titus ii, 9, — " Exhort ser- 
vants [doulos] to be obedient unto their own masters." I Timo- 
thy vi, 1 — 5, — " Let as many servants [douloi) as are under the 
yoke count their own masters worthy of all honor, that the 
name of God and his doctrine be not blasphemed. And they 
that have believing masters, let them not despise them, because 
they are brethren ; but rather do them service, because they aro 
faithful and beloved, partakers of the benefit. These things 
teach and exhort." " Servants under the yoke" in the passage 
just quoted, is understood by aU commentators of slavery. 
McKnight, an eminent Scotch divine, whose exposition of the 
Epistle is a standard work in Great Britain and in this country, 
introduces his explanation of this chapter thus : " Because the 
law of Moses allowed no Israelite to be made a slave for life 
without his own consent, the Judaizing teachers, to allure slaves 
to their own party, taught that under the Gospel likewise, in- 
voluntary slavery is unlawful." 

" This doctrine the Apostle condemned here, as in his other 
epistles, by enjoining Christian slaves to honor and obey their 
masters, whether they were believers or unbelievers, and by 
assuring Timothy that if any person taught otherwise, he op- 
posed the wholesome precepts of Jesus Christ and the doc- 
trine of the Gospel, which in all points is conformable to godli- 
ness or sound morality, and was puffed up with pride, without 
possessing any true knowledge, either of the Jewish or 
Christian revelation." Hear Whitby, I Timothy vi, 1 — " Let 
as many servants as are under the yoke [of bondage to the 
heathens) count their own masters worthy of all [due) honor, 
that the name of God and his doctrine be not blasphemed [or 
evil spoken of, as tending to dissolve those civil obligations, but 
rather honored in all estates of men, as tending to make them 



20 

better in their several relations") "With respect to Col. iv, 1 — 
" Masters, give unto your servants that which is just and equal ; 
knowing that ye also have a master in heaven," I would say in 
the language of Prof. Edwards, " That this injunction cannot 
mean the legal enfranchisement of the slave, is clear, for why, 
in that case, were any directions given to the slaves, if the rela- 
tion was not to continue." 

As it regards the sin of slavery, it may be affirmed that every 
Bane Biblical student admits no man was ever rejected by the 
Apostolic Church upon the ground that he owned slaves. !N"ay, 
we have every reason to believe that the communicants of that 
Cliurch were composed of a fair proportion of slaveholders. 
And we all know that the centurion (the master and owner of 
a slave) received from the Saviour that exalted compliment, 
** I have not found so great faith, no, not in Israel." 

Scripture commands the slave to obey ; and Scripture also 
commands the master to be kind. " It is upon the recognized 
lawfulness of the relation that all the precepts regulating the 
reciprocal duties of that relation are based." 

Is slaveholding a sin ? Abraham's slaves " were bought with 
his money." Is slaveholding a sin? The Mosaic law said, 
*' Thy bondmen and thy bondmaids, whom ye shall buy of the 
heathen, shall be your slaves for ever." Is slaveholding a sin ? 
All the teachings of the Saviour — all the sermons of the Apos- 
tles — all the Epistles — the entire New Testament, written for 
the instruction of coming generations — are silent in regard to 
the alleged sinfulness of slavery. A silence not to he misinter- 
preted. Is slaveholding a sin ? The universal practice of all 
Christian nations during many centuries. Is slaveholding a 
sin ? A half a century ago no man dreamed that it was. 

I devote a moment here to the consideration of the case of 
Onesimus, the fugitive-slave (doulos) returned by St. Paul to 
Philemon. The Epistle to Philemon instructs us, says Doctor 
Whitby, whose commentary is a standard work in Great Britain 
and in America, " That Cliristianity doth not impair the power 



21 

of masters over their servants, or give any authority to them 
who convert them to use them as their servants, without leave 
granted from their masters." Prof. Edwards, of the Audoun 
Theological Seminary, says, " Onesimus was the slave of Phile- 
mon, a Colossian, who had been made a Christian through the 
ministry of St. Paul. He absconded from his master for a rea- 
son which is not fully explained. In the course of his flight, 
he met with the Apostle at Rome, by whom he was converted, 
and ultimately recommended to the favor of his old master. 
St. Paul would, under any circumstances, have had no choice, 
but to send Onesimus to his old master ; the detention of a fugi- 
tive-slave was considered the same offence as theft, and would, 
no doubt, incur liability to prosecution for damages." " Jus- 
tice," says Dr. Adam Clark, " required St. Paul to send back 
Onesimus to his master, and conscience obliged Onesimus to 
agree in the propriety of the measure ; but love to the servant 
induced the Apostle to write this conciliating letter to the mas- 
ter. No servant should be either taken or retained from his 
own master, without the master's consent." For the instruc- 
tion of those who would deny that Onesimus returned to bond- 
age, I quote from Whitby on verses 15 and 16 : " For, perhaps, 
he therefore departed [from thee) for a season, that thou should- 
est receive him for ever, (i. e. to serve thee during life ; That 
thou shouldest receive him, I say,) Not now as a servant 
{only,) but above a servant, (as being also in Christ) a brother 
beloved." 

"With respect to the treatment that slaves ought to receive 
from their masters, I refer, first, to Ephesians vi, 9 — " And, ye 
masters, do the same thing unto them {show the like good-wiU 
to, and concern for them,) forbearing threatening (Gr. 'avuvra^ 
remitting oft the evils which you threaten to them :) knowing that 
your Master also is in heaven ; neither is there respect of persons 
{or conditions) with Him." Remember, masters, " That you 
with respect to God are servants, and that as you mete to your 
servants He will mete to you." Colos. iv, 1 : " Masters^ give 



22 

nnto your servants that which is just and equal ; knowing that 
ye also have a master in heaven." On this passage of Scripture 
Whitby says, "Hence it is evident, that justice is to be observed 
towards servants, and that there be offices of humanity and 
charity due to them : as, (1,) that we do not look upon them as 
vile persons, but as partakers of the same grace and nature with 
us, and so not only servants, but as brethren, Philem. 16. (2.) 
That we do not always punish all their miscarriages, but some- 
times do remit the punishments which in anger we threatened 
to inflict, Eph. vi, 9. (3.) That we do not make them serve 

with rigor ; ' Thou shalt not oppress, afflict, or wear 

him out with labor, but shalt fear the Lord,' Lev. xxv, 43. 
(4.) That we permit them to plead their cause, and to defend 
their right ; provided they do it with humility, not contradicting 
or speaking against the commands of their masters. Tit. ii, 9. 
* If I did despise the cause of my man-servant, or maid-servant,, 
when they contended with me ; what then shall I do when GrOD 
riseth up ? and when He visiteth, what shall I answer Him T 
Job xxi, 13, 14." 

In view of the utter helplessness of him who stands in the 
relation of property to the owner, I am constrained to say the 
merciless slaveholder shall at the last day receive the highest 
condemnation of heaven, and the deepest damnation of hell. 
Do you enquire, why slavery is permitted ? I answer, " in the 
imperfect state of human society, it pleases God to allow evils 
which check others that are greater." In His moral adminis- 
tration, as in the physical world, there are checks and balances 
whose intimate relations are comprehended only by Himself. 

As it regards the African race, the element of discord and 
distraction in our land, I have already referred to the prophecy 
of Noah respecting the descendants of Ham. Permit me now 
to ask, has the African of unmixed blood ever erected a civilized 
government ? Has he ever voluntarily engaged in pursuits of 
an industrial nature for any length of time ? These questions 
must be answered negatively. Has the African ever been 



23 

afiPorded the means of improvement ? Unquestionably ; for 
several nations of learning and refinement colonized different 
parts of Africa many ages ago. And yet, the millions of 
barbarians inhabiting Africa at this time occupy the position 
which they have held for thousands of years. Indeed, from the 
time of Hanno, the Carthaginian navigator, down to Livingstone, 
the condition of the African continent has been nearly stationary. 
Look at the natives in their own Africa. Without the know- 
ledge of a God, they roam the pathless woods, the burning 
deserts, hke beasts of prey. Some of them have no intelligible 
language by which to communicate with each other, and are 
scarce distinguishable in habits from the Ourang Outang. 
Feeding on the carcases of loathsome animals, as well as the 
bodies of one another, the Africans stand out in bold relief, 
presenting the shocking spectacle of a nation of millions of 
cannibals animated with the barbardVis instincts of savageism. 
Over the dark and sickening picture I would throw a vail. 
Look now to the South-East of this continent. In the year 
1800, St. Domingo, naturally the most fertile of all the West 
India Islands, was proclaimed independent. Contrast her 
present state with her former condition and behold her sad 
change. Again : Emancipation was declared in 1834 — 1838, 
in Jamaica, one of the fairest Islands of the fair ; 800,000 souls 
were by this act freed from slavery. Witness her inhabitants 
to-day relajising into barbarism. Behold the wide-spread desola- 
tion of Jamaica ! And this notwithstanding she has had the 
aid and protecting care of England, whose statesmen say the 
emancipation in that Island is a failure. 

What is the condition of the negro in Canada ? Need I say 
— it is deplorable. What are his circumstances in the Northern 
portion of this Confederacy? They are neither inviting nor 
encouraging. What are the descendants of Ham living in our 
Southern States? Precisely as Noah prophesied tliat they 
should be — " The servant of servants," literally, the meanest of 
slaves. I acknowledge his sad, very sad state even there ; and 



24 

yet " in no part of the world," to repeat the language of Dr. 
Ruffin, " is the condition of the negro so hopeful as in the 
South." He has been elevated from the degradation of the 
savage in his African home to the comforts of civilization and 
the blessings of our Holy Religion in a Christian land. Houses 
of worship and Sunday Schools for the slaves abound in every 
part of the Southern country, and the Gospel is preached to as 
many of them in proportion to their numbers as it is to the 
citizens of any part of our yet glorious Confederacy. An 
interest is taken in their eternal welfare. While visiting the 
South some months ago, I saw engaged in the pious duty of 
imparting religious instruction to the children of the slaves, one 
who stands to me in the relation of a sister-in-law. My own 
daughter is at this very time engaged as teacher in a Sunday 
School composed of the slave and the free black. Neither of 
these cases is an isolated one. If these things are permitted to 
go on, we know not what may be in store for the poor African, 
" the meanest of slaves." But destroy the Union of these States 
and you inflict thereby an irreparable injury upon the black 
man. How so ? Disunion will draw more tightly round the 
negro the chain of slavery. The South being relieved of that 
anti-slavery sentiment now in the Union, and which sentiment 
as held by moderate anti-slavery men is a check on the extrava- 
gances of the extreme pro-slavery advocate, and the South being 
also in fear of insurrections^ so soon as disunion is accomplished, 
many privileges heretofore secured to the slave will be with- 
drawn. Further: Disunion is abolition by violence. The 
slaves, generally, are unfit for freedom at this time; to be 
prepared for that is the work of many generations. Already 
their position is very different from what it was at the beginning 
of the present century. They have made marked progress in 
the right direction the last fifty years. Let them alone, and 
they shall continue to progress in the right direction. Be it 
understood, I do not say disunion is immediate abolition. But 
suppose it did bring, at once, general emancipation; in tliat 



25 

event what, in the name of heaven, would we do with the eman- 
cipated? The slave as now constituted, is by character, by 
habits, by the whole tenor of his life incapacitated from taking 
care of or providing for himself. He leans for support upon 
his master. When the oak falls, what becomes of the 2Mrasite '? 
I ask again, what would we or what could we do with the man- 
umitted slaves ? Should they remain in the South ? That, in 
view of all the circumstances of the case, is s\m-p\y j^'cposfer- 
oiis. AVould the North accept thc^e four millions of enfran- 
chized slaves as freemen ? The idea of her doing so is ridicu- 
lously absurd. Why, think of the treatment that Ranchlph's 
emancipated slaves received at the hands of the Ohioans. Again 
I ask, what could we do with the four millions of newly made 
freemen ? The truth is, *' that if the South sliould at this mo- 
ment surrender every slave, the wisdom of the entire world, 
united in solemn council, could not solve the question of their 
disposal." Indeed, the abolitionist, who is ever preaching im- 
mediate freedom to the slave, reminds me of certain of the 
ancient Greeks, who never appeared to care about anything 
practical, but disputed eternally concerning abstractions which 
were of no possible benefit to any one. 

Further : Disunion will be a serious blow, if not a vital stab 
to Liberia. It will prostrate the efforts now being made in this 
country to colonize Africa, and to civilize and Christianize the 
African. 

And yet, notwithstanding a dissolution of this Confederacy 
would be the death-icarrant of a world's liberty, and in over- 
whelming the white freemen, it would crush the black slave; 
read the words of Garrison in the Liberator of January 4, on 
disunion : " Hail the approaching jubilee, ye millions who are 
wearing the galling chains of slavery, for, assuredly, the day of 
your redemption draws nigh, bringing liberty to you and salva- 
tion to the whole land." 

Born to afflict Afric's family, 

And sow dissension in the hearts of brothers. 



26 

All such enthusiasts these times are fire-brands in a powder 
roagazine. Their fanatical philanthropy is an impious bur- 
lesque, their hysterical love for the slave a childish parody, 
their professions of Christianity the buffoon's farce. Their puny 
shafts aimed at the honor of the Southerner, remind one of 
those silly savages who let ^y their arrows at the sun, in the 
vain hope of piercing it I If civil war should come^ and these 
Pharisees can he found, I doubt not they shall very soon find 
themselves in as hot a fire as that in which Shadrach, Meshack, 
and Abednego, were cast, and that, too, without the protecting, 
care of a guardian angel. But if civil war comes, the hiding- 
place of these trumpeters will never be discovered — they will 
bury themselves under the ground deeper than the mole is wont to 
do. They may vaunt and cry " Let the earth be drunken with 
our blood," but " in dubious battle" they shall never engage. 
If the North is disposed to follow the lead of such leaders, let 
her call to mind these words — 

" Thrice is he armed who hath his quarrel just, 
And he but naked, though locked up in steel. 
Whose conscience with injustice is corrupted." 

Let her remember also, " the race is not always to the swift, 
nor the battle to the strong." 

As the fanatical follower of Mahomet went forth with the 
false Koran and the gleaming sword, so the insane abolitionist 
would go abroad with his morbid conscience and lighted torch. 
To him who would stir up a servile war, these words of Chan- 
niug are addressed : '' To instigate the slave to insurrection is a 
crime, for which no rebuke and no punishment can be too 
severe. This would be to involve slave and master in common 

ruin Were our national Union dissolved, we ought 

to reprobate, as sternly as we now do, the slightest manifesta- . 
tion of a disposition to stir up a servile war. Still more, were 
the Free and the Slaveholding States not only separated, but 
.engaged in the fiercest hostilities, the former would deserve the 



21 

abhorrence of the world and tlie indignation of Heaven, were 
the}^ to resort to insurrection and massacre as means of victory. 
Better were it for ns to bare our own breasts to the knife of the 
slave, than to arm him with it against his master." They who 
by violence break the manacles of the slave, shall find that the 
slave in turn will use the fragments thereof against friend as 
well as foe. 

Those who would wish to have a country governed by the 
negro, and are really desirous to advance his prospects in that 
regard, have ample scope for their sympathies, their energies, 
their means, and their benevolence, in the fields of Liberia, 
Hayti, and Great Britain West India Isles. It may be said 
further, when we take into consideration the enormous interests 
that are put in jeopardy by disunion, the damage to Christendom 
and to the cause of humanity would be less from the total tem- 
poral destruction of the whole African race, than the evils that 
would ineWtably follow a dissolution of the American Republic. 

Still, it might be afiirmed, there are very many evils incident 
to the slavery of the Southern States. So there are. I would 
to God they were fewer in number and less serious in character. 
I invite good men to the glorious work of using all legitimate 
means to lessen the evils of slavery. May Heaven smile upou 
the kind master, and frown on the cruel slave-driver. Let it 
not be thought, however, that the slaves are the only ones of 
the laboring classes that endure great evils. Look at the col- 
lieries and factories of England: in Coventry it is said that 
forty thousand weavers are at this time actually starving. Look 
at the peasantry of Ireland. Look at the Northern cities of 
this country. Look all around us 1 I heard a poor needle- 
woman a short time since say, " This incessant working from 
early morning till late at night is a slow death." How many 
hy cruel want are tempted to sin. 

Let the violent anti-slavery crusaders have in mind these 
things ; and let them recollect, too, that it sometimes happens, 
a brother of like sympathies with themselves strays South, and 



28 

after majriage, settles on his plantation, and witli many slaves 
to minister to his comfort he forthwith becomes more intensely 
Southern in feeling and profession than I who am a " native 
and to the manor born !" 

I repeat the thought before suggested, viz., the individual who 
would assert that any one particular section of the country 
grows all the patriots, or that any other particular section fur- 
nishes all the traitors, is under a delusion. The truth is, a fatal 
epidemic in morals has swept over the land till a cloud covers 
our shield and a paralysis has settled upon our patriotism. We 
are demoralized. The South has been slandered at the North, 
and the North grossly misrepresented at the South. Disloyalty 
at the North, violence at the South, and demagogueism over the 
land. It is a shame that the generous and the patriotic of the 
country should be overlaid and smothered by the selfish and 
designing. Who are the parties that would pull down the pil- 
lars of our Temple and crush us in common ruin ? The individ- 
ual that of late has done more than any other to plunge cur laud 
in civil w^ar is a notorious adidterer. When and where, are his 
treasonable schemes concocted ? It may be ai midnight in the 
arms ofhisjpolh'ed courtesan. 

" O treaclierous night. 
Thou lendest thy ready veil to every treason 5 
And teeming mischiefs thrive beneath thy shade." 

Look at yonder Federal Capitol. A few years ago a senator 
from his place proclaimed that, "if the people knew the cor- 
ruption of the National Legislature theywou'd rise in their 
might and throw the whole Congress into the Potomac ?' And 
but the other day a distinguished member of this CongTess as- 
serted in its very midst that, "if the constituency could only 
get a sight of their representatives early in the morning, never, 
never, would they trust three hundred such men, or trust the 
interests of this country in their hands. As well take three 
hundred hackmen from the City of New York." Gracious 



29 

Heavens ! has it come to this, that under the lead of s%ich men 
at Washington and elsewhere the North is to inaugurate civil 
war for a myth, and the South is to wade in blood for an ab- 
straction ! Forbid it, Almighty God I Forbid it, my country ! 
Under such leaders the Union now stands quailing like a storm- 
smitten ship before the tempest. It is not to be doubted that 
eventually the remorse of such leaders shall be greater by far 
than that which characterized the last hours of Cardinal Wolsey : 

" Cromwell, I charge thee, fling: away ambition j 
By that sin fell the angels ; how can man then, 
The image of his Maker, hope to win by't ? 
Let all the ends thou aim'st at be thy country's. 
Thy God's and truth's ; tlien if thou fall'st, 
Thou fall'st a blessed martyr. 
Had I but served my God with half the zeal 
I served my king, he would not in mine age 
Have left me naked to mine enemies." 

One of the greatest obstacles in the way of a settlement of the 
present political difficulties is the demagogue. He well knows 
that if the vexed questions between the North and South be 
fairly and permanently settled, then Othello's occupation's gone I 
He from the crest of the wave sinks into the trough of the sea. 
The demagogue resembles the mud of the Mississippi. Every 
winding of the political stream shifts him from one side to the 
other. He deserves more than the punishment of the cunning 
Sysyphus. To gain his mess of pottage, the demagogue would 
crucify the genius of liberty and make his country a Necropolis, 
a silent city of the dead. Through his course the ship of State 
has drifted toward a dangerous reef, and now there is danger of 
her going over that reef. How large a proportion of aspiring 
politicians that do not possess the mens conscia recti. 

It seems incredible that the Union of these States should be 
dissolved. " Nearly a milhon of natives of the Nortliern States 
have settled and intermarried in the South, and as many more 
from the South in the North. In a ci%il war we should have 

3* 



30 

near relations arrayed against each other and sheddnig each 
other's blood." When I think of all the relations subsisting 
between the several States of the Confederacy, and how inti- 
mately interwoven are all their varied interests, the connexion 
between the North and the South reminds me of inosculation, 
which is the union of two vessels of an animal body at their 
extremities, (for instance the vein and arteryj or by contact 
and perforation of their sides, by means of which a communica- 
tion is maintained, and the circulation of fluids is carried on. 
To my countrymen, in the words of Holy Writ, I say, " Sirs, ye 
are brethren" How imporimit is it then, that we frown on 
everything that is calculated to alienate us from one another, and 
smile on those things that tend to peace. And how doubly 
imjDortant is it that there be no attempt at coercion, another 
name for civil war. Let fall the axe and forthwith from the 
brain of Jove there springs Minerva. Coercion ! Attempt it 
and the country is a prairie on fire. They who favor coercion, 
it seems to me, have not duly considered the subject. Use your 



Sure He that made us with such large discourse, 
Leaking before and after, gave us not 
That capabilily and godlike reason 
To rust in us unused. 

Coercion ! Attempt it, and the South shall have many a 
Joan of Arc as well as many a Florence Nightingale. Coercion ! 
Can you the ocean chain ? Then coerce the South. Coercion ! 
Can you bind the tornado with tow? Then subjugate the 
South. Subjugate the South? When that shall have been 
accomplished this country, now as a giant going forth in the 
pride of strength, will be but the empty skin of an immolated 
victim. Coercion 1 Why at the outset of its attempt there will 
be the riots of starving mobs, of which Mirabeau, many years 
ago, said, that the fiercest insurrections were those which arose 
from the stomachs of a people without bread. They are hke 



31 

hungry or famishing beasts of prey. If \vc would have all 
things wdl, let us act in accordance with these words of 
Chatham : " One plain maxim, to which I have invariably 
adhered through life, that in every question in which my liberty 
or my property was concerned, I sliould consult, and be 
determined by the dictates of common sense." If common sense 
be consulted, I am sure the American people will put their iron 
heel upon the demagogue and apply the vice to the mountebank. 
Let them do that, and the tricks of the political pettifogger, 
together with the nostrum of the quack to cure a patient that 
isn't sick, vanish! and our troubles end a whirlwind in "Wendell 
Phillips' vest pocket, or, a tornado in a cotton seed. Would 
that oil could feel that country above party and section is the 
inspiration of true patriotism. 

If this were so, then, " as from the wing no scar the sky re- 
tains, no furrow from the keel," how speedily should the wounds 
of our present difficulties close, and their marks be no more seen 
for ever ! But follow the lead of those whose course toward the 
Union for a period of many years reminds us of that Roman 
whose peroration to his every speech was, " I conclude that 
Carthage ought to be destroyed," and what shall be the result? 
Wide-spread ruin. It is recorded in Holy Writ that the gourd 
was a sheltering shadow over Jonah's head, and that a " worm 
smote the gourd that it withered." If we would be in as piti- 
ful a condition as that which marked Jonah's state after the 
destruction of his shelter from the burning heat, let us smite 
the Union of these States. In other days it was said, " While 
stands the Coliseum, Rome shall stand ; when falls the Coliseum, 
Rome shall fall ; and when Rome falls — the world," We may 
say, while stands the Union, the comitry shall stand; when 
falls the Union, the country shall fall ; and when the country 
falls — liberty. If we with parricidal hands stab the Union, 
then may it be said of us hereafter as it has been said of other 
races ; " Greece, classic Greece, * the land of scholars and the 
nurse of arms,' where and what is she ? For two thousand years 



32 

the op]3ressor has bound her to the earth. She fell not when 
the mighty were upon her. Her sons were united at Thermo- 
pylee and Marathon, and the tide of her triumph rolled back 
upon the Hellespont. SJie was conquered hy her own factions. 
She fell hy the hands of her own people. The wars of Macedonia 
did not the work of destruction. It was already done by her 
own corruptions, banishments, and dissensions. Eome, republi- 
can Eome, whose eagles glanced in the rising and setting sun, 
where and what is she? More than eighteen centuries have 
moved over the loss of her empire. The Goths, and Vandals, 
and Huns, the swarms of the North, completed only what was 
already begun at home. Romans betrayed Rome'^ Oh I 
Americans, betray not America. Shall our dear country be 
ruined by the frenzy of party and the madness of partisans ? 
Forbid it, my countrymen ; forbid it heaven ! Shall it be said 
hereafter of our national emblem — 

Lo ! the struck eagle stretched upon the plain, 
No more through rolling clouds to soar again j 
Viewed his own feather on the fatal dart 
Which winged the shaft that quivered to his heart. 
Keen were his pangs, but keener far to feel 
He nursed the pinion that impelled the steel 5 
While the same plumage that had warmed his nest 
Drank the last life-drop of his bleeding breast. 

On the day of the meeting of the secessionists at Kingston, 
Ga., a revolutionary soldier, whose eyes were dimmed by age, 
enquired the object of the assemblage. He was told they were 
trying to dissolve the Union. Whereupon the aged patriot 
dropped his withered face, and seemed to be in deep distress 
for one or two minutes, after which he raised his head and_, 
with a faltering voice, said, " Oh, don't do that till I am dead !" 
While he uttered these words the big tears chased each other 
down his furrowed cheeks. He was answered that many 
would try to prevent them; to which he replied, "Don't let 
them do that till I am dead I" If there are those who would 



33 

break np my country, to them I cry, " Oh, don't do that till I 
am dead !" To you who would prevent them I pray, " Don't 
let them do that till I am dead !" Don't let them do that till 
my children are dead ! Don't let them do that till all mankind 
are dead ! Oh, ye wives, and mothers, and daughters, pray for 
your native land ! Oh, ye guardian angels of my country, 
shelter her from the threatened storm ! Oh, ye patriots, stand 
up for the palladium of your liberties, the Union of the States I 
Maryland, my own Maryland ! the mountain billows of dis- 
union have risen up and rolled on until they threaten to break 
the ship of State to pieces, and to send the shattered fragments 
floating on the great ocean of popular tumult, but thou standest 
like a ligM-Jiouse amidst the tossing Jlood. Stand fast, shine on 
thou beacon of the Union ! and in response to the question, shall 
these States be dissevered ? there shall rise from the Atlantic to 
the Pacific one mighty shout shaking earth and sky — 

No r louder than Niag'ra's roll. 

Let the deep echo thrill — 
Hold to our honor and our mi2:ht, 
Hold to our heritage of right ! 

Preserve the Union still ! 

In anticipation of the joyful sound, I in the words of Marathon's 
soldier, cry, " Rejoice ! Rejoice !" All hail. Star Spangled Ban- 
ner, flag of my country ! All hail. Union, the salvation of 
liberty I 



AN ORATION 

ON 

THE UNION: 

BT 

Rev. JAMES PRESTON FUGITT, 

Delivered, at the Annual Commencement of 
St. Timoth.y's Hall, Catonsville, Haiti- 
more CoTinty, Jnne 30, 1860. 



PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION. 

One of the first Statesmen of the country wrote to the 
author : " Your address is patriotic, classical, and eloquent. 
It is also well timed." 

Commendations of similar import have been received from 
other distinguished citizens, North and South, as also several 
invitations to repeat the Oration before difiPerent xVssociations 
and Literary Societies. 

A few extracts from the Press are here given : 

The Union. This is the title of a fervent and patriotic 
address delivered by the Rev. Mr. Fugitt, recently, on the 
occasion of a Hterary celebration at one of our Colleges. It 
abounds in beautiful and healthy sentiments, and cannot faU 
to exercise a saving influence. We commend it to the perusal 
of our readers. — The Southern Family Joumcd. 

This is a seasonable and admirable Oration on a subject vital 
to the interests of this country. The Orator, fired witli the 
spirit of patriotism, dwells forcibly on the multiplied and dia- 



36 

astrous evils that would accrue from the dissolution of the 
Union. We hope this little tract will be scattered broadcast 
all over the land. — The True Union. 

Its patriotic sentiments and earnest appeals to the young 
men before whom the eloquent speaker delivered his seasona- 
ble remarks, will insure for it a general perusal. We under- 
stand that several distinguished gentlemen have written to Mr. 
Fugitt, highly commending his address. — The American. 

It is a production that does credit to the patriotic and Union- 
loving Baltimorean, — California Spirit of the Times. 

We endorse the opinion of one of the leading Statesmen of 
the country in a letter to the author, " your address is patriotic, 
classical, and eloquent. It is also well timed." — Weekly Dis- 
patch. 

An interesting address. The theme selected by Mr. Fugitt 
was The Union, which is one that should claim the attention of 
every lover of his country, and which was elaborated with 
marked force and ability. — The Patriot. 

A stirring and patriotic oration. It is a spirited and much 
praised effort, from the perusal of which every reflecting reader 
must rise with an increased love for the Union and its consecrated 
institutions. — The Clipper. 

Sold by H. N, Waite, 138 Baltimore Street, 






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